Works
Vivekananda left a body of philosophical works. Only a handful of those were published during his lifetime. A notable theme in his works is different ways of worshiping suggested for varied types of individuals. Vivekananda observed that human could be classified into four categories—those who were in constant activity, or the worker; those who were driven by their inner urge, or the emotional; those who tended to analyse the working of their minds, or the mystical; and those who weighed everything with reason, or the rational. So he discussed four ways of worships—Karma yoga for the worker, Bhakti yoga for the emotional, Raja yoga for the mystical, and Jnana yoga for the rational. Majority of his published works were compiled from lectures given around the world. Vivekananda was a singer and a poet, and composed many songs and poems including his favourite Kali the Mother. He blended humour in his teachings; his language was lucid. His Bengali writings stand testimony to the fact that he believed that words—spoken or written—should be for making things easier to understand rather than show off the speaker or writer's knowledge.
Read more about this topic: Swami Vivekananda
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“The man who builds a factory builds a temple, that the man who works there worships there, and to each is due, not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to the another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.”
—Freya Stark (b. 1893–1993)
“Reason, the prized reality, the Law, is apprehended, now and then, for a serene and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of cares and works which have no direct bearing on it;Mis then lost, for months or years, and again found, for an interval, to be lost again. If we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, have half a dozen reasonable hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)